Business

The prediction of the stock market is without question an interesting task. A basic motivation for it is financial gain. To accomplish this task there are a number of methods available, including time series forecasting, computer techniques, and technical and fundamental analysis.1 My focus is on a branch that analyses charts. I monitor the time series of hundreds of stocks, looking for known patterns in share price changes in order to make better investment decisions. I would like to tell you how I do that.

If you put water on the stove and heat it up, it will at first just get hotter and hotter. You may then conclude that heating water results only in hotter water. But at some point everything changes – the water starts to boil, turning from hot liquid into steam. Physicists call this a “phase transition.”

When Professor Sir Charlie Bean published his review of UK economic statistics in March, he warned that current systems and process were starting to show their age. “We need to take economic statistics back to the future or we risk missing out an important part of the modern economy from official figures,” he said.